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Jerusalem Delivered: 4 Clorinda saves Sophronia and Olindo
Torquato Tasso opens the first Canto of Jerusalem Delivered with a fairly conventional dedication to the muse, and homage to his patron, Alfonso II of Este. His narrative starts by setting events six...
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Plutarch’s Lives in Paint: 18a Phocion
Some are remembered for their achievements in life, others for the injustice of their departure from it. Those who know the works of Nicolas Poussin will recognise the name of Phocion, whose death was...
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Plutarch’s Lives in Paint: 18b Cato the Younger
Another, perhaps the other, great figure of classical times who is prominent for the moment of his death is Cato the Younger. Plutarch’s Lives also contains an account of his great-grandfather,...
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Jerusalem Delivered: 5 Clorinda fights Tancred, and Armida meets Godfrey
The able-bodied Christians who have been banished from the city of Jerusalem, together with Sophronia and Olindo, are arriving at the nearby town of Emmaus, where the crusaders have also arrived, on...
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Plutarch’s Lives in Paint: 20a Demosthenes
In his Lives, Plutarch compares the biographies, but not their speeches, of two of the greatest of the classical orators: Demosthenes, the Athenian, and Cicero, the Roman. Their lives had many close...
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Jerusalem Delivered: 6 Erminia and the Shepherds
The seductive ‘pagan’ sorceress Armida has just told Godfrey of Bouillon, leader of the First Crusade’s siege on the city of Jerusalem, a long sob story, leading to her request for ten of his best...
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River Gods and Nymphs
Narrative painting of classical myths has quite a few conventions, although these days they’re not easy to find described. One which often confuses the unwary is the symbolism of river gods and their...
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Plutarch’s Lives in Paint: 20b Cicero
Plutarch’s biography of Cicero, the Roman orator and statesman, is the last of his Lives which has been extensively depicted in paint. After some fairly inconsequential discussion over his ancestry and...
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Jerusalem Delivered: 7 Tancred and Rinaldo lost, and Clorinda killed
With Armida causing havoc among the crusader camp, and leading ten and more of their best warriors out on a fool’s errand, Erminia had dressed in Clorinda’s armour, tried to help the wounded Tancred,...
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Plutarch’s Lives in Paint: From Theseus to Caius Marius
Over the last six months, I have been summarising some of the biographies in Plutarch’s Lives (or Parallel Lives, if you prefer) and showing some of the great paintings which have been made in...
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Jerusalem Delivered: 8 Armida abducts Rinaldo
In the middle of the night following the crusaders’ first major assault on the city of Jerusalem, Clorinda burned their siege towers down. Unrecognised by Tancred, he then mortally wounded her in a...
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Plutarch’s Lives in Paint: From Alexander the Great to Cato the Younger
In my second and final look at the greatest stories and paintings from Plutarch’s Lives, I consider two of his longest and best biographies, of Alexander and Julius Caesar, together with one which...
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Jerusalem Delivered: 9 In Armida’s Garden
The crusaders led by Godfrey of Bouillon desperately need Rinaldo back if they are to resume their assault on Jerusalem. Guelph’s party, notably the knights Charles (Carlo) and Ubaldo, have gone off in...
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Paintings of 1918: Narrative and Figurative
As we’re told everywhere, history and other forms of narrative painting died in the nineteenth century. To examine how true that might be, in this look at some of the great paintings of 1918, I start...
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Jerusalem Delivered: 10 Rinaldo rescued
The ‘Saracen’ sorceress Armida had abducted the crusader knight Rinaldo to her enchanted garden far to the west, on the Fortunate Isles. A rescue team of the knights Charles and Ubaldo sailed out in a...
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Boccaccio and the Decameron: Invitation to a new series
As you will have gathered, I love a good story, and most of all I love it painted well, preferably by some masters spanning the period from the Renaissance to the twentieth century. We looked at some...
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The Four Seasons: Poussin to Mucha
Towards the end of his life, Nicolas Poussin’s hands developed a severe tremor which made painting fine details very hard for him. Despite that, his final years saw some of his greatest landscape...
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Jerusalem Delivered: 11 Erminia saves Tancred
Armida, abandoned by Rinaldo so he could return to the siege of Jerusalem, has joined the massed army of the King of Egypt. One of his leaders, Adrastus, has promised to rip Rinaldo’s heart out, and...
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The Decameron: Nastagio Degli Onesti, the penalty of the pure in body
The stories told each day in Boccaccio’s Decameron follow a theme appointed by the ‘ruler’ of that day, as they decree when they are crowned with laurels at the end of the previous day’s storytelling....
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Ossian: The painting of a literary hoax?
There have been plenty of hoaxes in painting, almost invariably over the identity of the artist (or forger) who painted a specific work. It’s unusual for most of a generation of painters to be caught...
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